Busy August

We are having the kind of summer we both envisioned when we launched into this lifestyle. We are at our favorite park, work camping and enjoying our little neighborhood called Volunteer Village. This summer we are providing the day care for one of our granddaughters and savoring the 2-3 afternoons each week we get to spend with her. We have our two young grandsons over regularly. More weekends than not, I wake up to the sound of little voices and have to step around the queen sized air bed they sleep on when I emerge from the bedroom at the back of the motor home. I don’t even mind stepping on the occasional Lego brick that sometimes gets left on the floor and finds itself embedded in the arch of my foot during my 3 a.m. trip to the bathroom.  We have pulled out of our site twice now to join our old camping group at another campground and have plans to do it once again in September.

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  Nora and Grandpa park time

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  S'mores time

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  Evening fishing with the boys

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  My baby is 30!

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I spent a great day in early August with our two grandsons Isaac and Hunter at the Bison Days Festival at the Neal Smith Wildlife Refuge. It was an exclusive grandma day. Champ stayed home and let me have them all to myself.  It was a hit with the boys. We spent the morning at the refuge engaged in all kinds of activities and at the end Hunter asked me when they would do it again. He was a little disappointed when I told him it would be next summer. It makes my heart happy watch them enjoy and learn about nature and wildlife. One of the best parts of our summers now is exposing the young grand kids to outdoor activities in natural areas. They love to go to the Nature Center and they all seem to forget about the television and their tablets when they stay with us.

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  Prairie Flowers scavenger hunt with the boys

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  Antler ring toss

The Iowa State Fair is now a memory of two shifts worked at the Saylorville Lake booth and more memories made as a couple at the site of our first date 18 years ago. The summer has also been marked by the wedding of our oldest grandson, and the 30^th birthday milestone of our youngest. In between we have managed to hold three village potlucks, spend time with siblings and friends and even reconnect with family that we have not seen in years.

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  Areal view of the fair from the sky glider

Late summer vegetables are finding their way from their pots to my kitchen, the herbs I grow are thriving and the flowers are in all their glory. Our site is a little slice of heaven for us.

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I have started working for my friend at his store now that back to school and football season upon us. It’s a fun gig for me each summer and it’s easy extra help for them during their busy late summer season.  Champ and I are beginning to talk about the time till our departure date in terms of weeks instead of months. The emotions of excitement to escape winter, see new places and reconnect with RV friends, ebbs and flows against the wall sadness, guilt and angst of leaving friends and family behind.

It has taken three summers but we have settled into a nice
summer routine. We come back to Saylorville, work part time for the lake, spend
lots of time with the kids and do our best to cram 12 months of stuff into the
6 months that we are here. It’s nice when the vision you dream up turns to
reality.

Until Next Time…

The Second Half

Oh boy, summer is really clicking by. Our mid-summer Volunteer meeting when we will talk about our fall departure date was Wednesday night.  I realized today, that the grand kids will be back in school this time next month and the late summer birthdays will begin next week with a grandson, my daughter, daughter in law, another grandson and yet another grandson all having birthdays within 30 days of each other. The State Fair is around the corner and this morning as I walked out of the Visitor’s Center, I spied a huge flock of Pelicans circling above. They are a couple weeks early this year. Who knows why? Maybe it’s climate change, maybe the fires in Canada this summer, maybe the crazy out of character weather patterns, but they are back and that is a sure sign of fall coming.

Work here has changed up a bit. The grass does not need
mowed weekly in Iowa this time of year. I have lots of days, that I don’t need
to mow, so my duties have been quite varied. Power washing bridges, weeding the
butterfly garden, weed eating areas we can’t get with the mower, trimming bushes
and branches back from the roadsides, picking up large rocks from the beach,
left by flood waters. And, every wild area Volunteers favorite duty; pulling
fence.

I say all the time that my least favorite work is weed eating. The constant vibration in my hands makes me nauseous, always has.  Then, I get sent to pull fence and I remember, weed eating is my second least favorite work. If you work on a maintenance or natural resources team at a big park or natural area anywhere in the US, there is a good chance, that in the timber or open fields where the public doesn’t go, there are old wood fence posts and barbed wire left over from decades ago when the land was cattle ranch or some sort of agriculture operation. When time allows, a fall back job for volunteers is to work on removing the old wire and posts; mostly by hand because of the location.  It is a hazard for the wildlife especially deer who forage in the area and it also inhibits fire work.

Then, as always, Mother Nature can change the plan any day. It happened here at Saylorville last weekend. The sweltering hot humid weather was broken by a front that came through and used 60 MPH straight line winds to lower our temps and drive out the humidity. The result was some significant tree damage here. Thankfully, it occurred in day use areas that were not occupied at the time and not in campgrounds. An enormous tree fell at the Visitor’s Center and another at the edge of the Butterfly Gardens. Today's work, after our quality time with the barbed wire, included making use of the mulch left behind by the tree service and spreading it on some of the flower beds. The rest was hauled away to the mulch mountain that exists behind the scene’s here.

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  Judy standing on the stump from the giant Oak that fell at the VC

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  Wrangling old barbed wire and brambles

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  Tree trunk grown around old barbed wire and chain link

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  Downed Oak at the VC

I made reservations for our trip south a couple of days ago. We’ll start in Lindsborg, KS with my aunt and cousins for our third time at the Swedish Festival, then kill 10 days meandering our way to Mercedes, Texas with a stop on Galveston Island for 5 days. Back to School shopping is getting ready to kick into high gear and I’ll work in my friends store for the next 8 weeks helping out through the chaos. In the meantime, I’ll keep working for the park here, writing the newsletters and spend as much time as I can with the kids and friends. The pace is ramping up to fever pitch.

It’s like the storm before the calm. It will be off the
charts crazy busy from now till Mid October, when we leave. Then we’ll have a
winter of basking in warm weather, leisurely schedules, seeing old friends and
missing the hell out of the kids.

Until Next Time…

Caterpillars and Storm Clouds

It is getting to be the time of year when Natural Resources duties become varied and interesting. With the arrival of drought season and the extreme heat that bears down on Iowa this time of year, mowing is no longer a weekly job. I mowed Monday and likely won’t mow again for a couple of weeks. With the mowing contractors in full swing, I can get my mowing done in a little over a half day. That leaves a partial day and another full day to do whatever Ranger Coty tasks us with. I like the variety and mystery of how each day may unfold.

At a big place like Saylorville about anything can and does happen. This past week Judy and I went over to the Butterfly gardens to water a couple of beds that were built after the sprinkler system was built and are just out if its reach. We were thrilled to discover a multitude of Monarch Caterpillars munching away on the dill growing in the gardens. Monarch Caterpillars are naturally attracted to dill. It made sense as we watched them and realized they are perfectly camouflaged in the dill weed. As we weeded some of the beds we squealed every time we came across a caterpillar or cocoon. After all, that is why the butterfly garden exists. The fruits of Judy’s dedicated labors were revealing themselves! I love working with her. Driving down the paths on the ATV is an ongoing lesson in Saylorville history. With 18 years of volunteering here under her belt, every nook and cranny of this place holds a memory for her, that she freely shares as we work around the lake.

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  Monarch Caterpillar on Dill

We have been busy power washing the bridges that traverse the creeks and ravines in 7 places along the 13 miles of the 26-mile-long Neal Smith bike trail that moves through Saylorville and is maintained by the Corps. Some days we trim branches that are encroaching the trail and roadsides, or low hanging branches that make mowing difficult. We have pulled old cattle fence and some days we weed eat, my least favorite job. Eventually we will be filling water bags placed around new trees to keep them properly hydrated as they establish themselves.

Yesterday, Judy and I were tasked with removing the sand left behind by flood waters from the picnic pads at Sandpiper Beach. The three 10x10 pads were covered in about 4” of sand. Picnic tables and nice canopies will be installed now that we have cleaned them off. As we shoveled and swept, we started watching a rather impressive shelf cloud begin to form just to the north of us. We worked a little faster and took a call from Coty, who was 8 miles south at the other end of the lake and also watching the sky. We promised to head back as soon as we were finished. Turns out Judy and I both like a good summer thunderstorm. We had both seen the forecast and knew that our 10% chance of rain was going to happen and that it would be short lived and strong but non-severe. I had my camera for once.  We were making good progress getting back to the shop just ahead of the front line. I was taking pictures and we were enjoying the sudden 10-degree temperature drop and cool wind ahead of the storm. Life was good till the ATV we were driving began to overheat and we realized we were not going to make it back, not in that vehicle anyway. Coty had called to check on our progress getting back and we gave him the news. He drove the park truck out to fetch us from the trail and we limped the ATV to cover so it could cool down and make the rest of the trip back to the maintenance complex later. We finished our workday soaked to the skin and laughing.

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  Storm Clouds over Prairie Flower

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  On the trail driving just ahead of the storm

The summer is passing quickly. We have our mid-summer Volunteer meeting next week to talk about departure dates, who is planning to return and sign up for our shifts manning the booth at the Iowa State Fair in August. It’s hard to believe that I’m already plotting our trip and stop overs for our trip to Mercedes Texas where we will winter this year. Who knows what the rest of the summer will bring? That’s the best part, everyday is truly and adventure.

Until Next Time…

Transition Day

We awoke this morning to temperatures in the upper 60’s and
low humidity. A rarity in Iowa this time of year. We will enjoy one day of mild
weather in the 80’s as we brace for the next heat wave that promises to be hotter
and more enduring than our last blast of heat that lasted about 6 days. I’m looking
ahead to next weeks outside work with more caution than last week when I
succumbed to heat exhaustion. It was so weird. I felt fine all day, drank over
100 ounces of water throughout the day and was peeing clear. I was feeling
quite full of myself, thinking I had accomplished my task of mowing a large
campground, in preparation for the 4^th of July Holiday and believing
I was still 25 when I didn’t really notice heat. That all came to a quick end
when I got home and hit the cool conditioned air of the motor home. Within an
hour I was dizzy, vomiting and shaking. I retreated to the bedroom wondering
who had given me the flu, still not admitting I had overdone it in the 100-degree
heat that day. The next morning, I felt better and went into work. Ironically
the safety meeting topic was heat stress. There were my symptoms from the night
before laid out in nice bullet points under the heat exhaustion section of the
memo. I decided to work only the morning that day, purposely chose a shaded day
use area to mow, drank a big Gatorade and went home and slept all afternoon.  Lesson learned as they say.

This morning I enjoyed a little practice in immersion, as I call it. There is a road behind our site about 1000 ft or so long leading down to the boat ramp parking lot. It divides two very distinct habitats. Shore line, meadow and towering Cottonwoods on the west side. Heavy timbered Oak Savannah on the east. When Champ saw me strap on my camera and sling my binoculars over my shoulder he decided to stay home, knowing my ‘walk’ would be more of a stand and look morning. It never ceases to amaze me how I can walk down this road for exercise at about a 3.5 mph clip and only notice the big things. The lake of course, birds flitting about, wildflowers along the roadside and the ever present Des Moines Skyline beyond the dam. A constant reminder that the concrete jungle is only 12 miles away. When I do a bird walk by myself taking time to immerse myself the real action starts to reveal itself. I usually identify 30 or so bird species along this short stretch of roadway. Depending on what side of the road I am watching the species vary a great deal. Red Winged Black birds, Orioles, Tree Swallows and shore birds dominate the lake side. Woodpeckers, a wide variety of sparrows, Indigo Buntings, Nuthatches and wrens populate the east side of the road in the timber. Just as I came back to the entrance of the village, I smiled at the irony of a river grape leaf eaten up by a bunch of Japanese Beetles. I liked it, an invasive species feeding on an invasive species. If only they stayed away from the good plants. These mornings have become a sort of practice of transitioning from my busy three days when I am working for Natural Resources and putting the newsletters together. Thursday mornings are the beginning of my work camping weekend, as it were. I am starting to think about topics for next week’s newsletters and basking in the fact that our work camping dream has come true.

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  Red Winged Blackbirds flocking

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  Monarch on Milkweed

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  Japanese Beetles feeding

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  Indigo Buntng

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  Female Baltimore Oriole

Until Next Time…

s

Changing Scenery

Summer has arrived in Iowa with the unforgiving relentless
heat and humidity that we have every summer. This past week we have had highs
in the mid 90’s with dewpoints in the uppers 
70’s resulting in heat indices above 110 in the afternoon.  Iowa is, indeed, a climate of extremes.
Things are slowing down a bit with the end of the baseball season for our
grandson’s little league team.

I was mowing Monday morning enjoying my surroundings and thinking about how much things have changed since our arrival in late April. The roadsides and timber lines where I mow have changed remarkably. The flood debris is all but gone. The dried winter weary grass in now lush and green. The white blossoms of the raspberry bushes along the roadside are now ripe berries waiting to be eaten by the wildlife. Early spring wildflowers are now being outshined by the summer stars; Milkweed, Coneflower, Compass flower, Butterfly bush, and a yellow ground cover flower that I can’t remember the name of. Trees that were bare when I mowed the first time are now full with bright green leaves. It seems like just yesterday, the butterfly gardens were either bare or just starting to emerge. In the blink of an eye the flowers are in full bloom and butterflies are everywhere. The Zennia seed in one of my flower beds has grown to foot high plants ready to bloom and the grand kids are growing as fast as the grass.

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  Water Break Time

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  Another View from my mower

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  Road behind our rig heading to the lake

I spent 5 years of my 12-year banking career in a corner office of our branch. I had so much natural light there were days, I didn’t turn my lights on and no one noticed.  I thought I had a nice view there with floor to ceiling glass facing the lobby entry and 6-foot high windows surrounding my desk on south and west sides.  My office was filled with plants and had more the feel of a greenhouse than a bank office. That was nothing compared to the view I have this summer from my ‘office chair’ on the mower I use most days. The view of the lake is ever present as I mow my designated areas. Not only am I surround by plants, but I encounter wildlife throughout my day. From shore birds standing along the shoreline, to the swallows and bluebirds that swoop down by the dozens eating the insects I stir up in the grass, to the deer I flushed out of the ditch this morning. She was a bit confused and ran along-side the mower for about 20 yards before she turned into the woods. I had to wonder if anyone has ever been trampled by a scared deer mowing an area like this. She could have just as easily turned toward me and kicked me in the head as she jumped over the mower instead of over the brush between us and the timberline.

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  Showy Milkweed

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  Butterfly Bush

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  Canadian Horse Nettle

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  Song Sparrows with dinner

The best part is the smell.  The milkweed is blooming and the air around me is filled with its sweet powdery aroma mixed with the smell of the fresh cut grass coming from under the mower deck. It really doesn’t get much better than this for me.

We are getting plenty of time to see grand kids, kids, friends and family. I have to admit even though we came home to a flooded lake and the weather stayed colder that we would have liked early on, we are finally having a summer like we imagined when we went full-time three years ago. We love our volunteer duties at the lake and are getting lots of time to hang out with everyone and just be home, as it were. The 4^th of July is around the corner and the Iowa State Fair will be here before we know it. Summer is in full swing and ticking by fast already.

Until Next Time...

Is It Really Almost July Already?

I realized yesterday that I haven’t posted anything in
several weeks. The same thing happened around this time last year. It’s a
combination of getting really busy once the weather finally straightened out
and feeling like my summer routine is not that interesting to anyone. We are
past the first round of family gatherings and the star of the summer, our
oldest grandson’s wedding. I spent my 54^th birthday this year
beaming at them and choking back a tear every now and then as I took pictures
of them getting things ready the night before and moving through their big day.

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  The Happy Couple

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  Sydney's Birthday in April

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So far, the summer has been a pretty steady stream of time with grandkids, watching Hunter play baseball with his Little League team, helping out with summer daycare for our four year old grand daughter Nora and of course several visits to gardens and greenhouses with my friend Joyce. We’ve hosted several evenings at our campsite and then there is the bird watching. As I learn more about birds I notice new ones each season we are here. We’ve even managed to pull out of our digs here in Volunteer Village and go camping with our old group two weekends so far this year. It makes us feel normal in a way, but also reminds us how different our life is. On Sunday morning when everyone packs up their rig and returns to their house and we pack up the 'house' and move it back to Saylorville. It’s hard to explain and we still have moments when we realize that our minds are still not quite fully converted even after three years. We were driving up to Little Wall Lake to join our friends and family at the campground when I wondered to myself if I remembered the check book to pay for the site. I was in my old life for a fleeting moment. I chuckled and reminded myself that I had everything I own with me because we were driving the house! Where else would it be but with us?

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  Hunter fielding a line drive

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  Just like the old days at Little Wall

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  Marshmallows with Conner

I was out working with Judy yesterday, cleaning up flood debris from a hiking trail, when I spotted a Bobolink. (That’s a bird for you non-birders) I have only seen one twice since I started paying attention to birds. Then a few minutes later we stirred up two Osprey from their perch in the top of a dead tree. I have been really enjoying working with the Natural Resources Team this summer. I am getting to mow a lot. Yes, I said ‘get to’. I enjoy the solitary time on a mower looking at everything around me, thinking, smelling the grass and the blooming plants. It is one of those times when I find inspiration. I’ve helped in the butterfly gardens, though not as much as I would like. Champ has officially been dubbed “The Playground Guy”. He is really loving his job here. He is out and about, talking to people he meets and best of all gets to climb around on the equipment as he checks it and gets some workout in the process. I marvel that at 67 years young, he can still do chin-ups. He’s made that a part of checking the Hanging Bars of the playgrounds. Most of all I think he likes knowing that he has a hand in making sure the playgrounds are safe for the kids.

Workout as he tests monkey bars

What I am realizing the most about how I am evolving in my
early retirement and work camping life is that I am immersed in things that I
love. Nature, the outdoors, land stewardship and conservation. My very life has
become a canvas that allows me to share my love of these things with my
grandkids when they come to spend time with me. I am in tune with all the free
activities at the parks designed to introduce kids to the natural world and all
the wonders it holds. Maybe I will plant a seed in one of them that will
germinate later in life and bloom as a hobby or career. My daughter has been
cultivating her own interest in learning to garden and is working to establish
some pollinator habitat in her own yard. I love the time we get to spend
together in her yard and smile inside as I watch her develop her own love of
plants and flowers and see her own satisfaction when plants thrive in the space
where she has placed them.  Saylorville
is my home turf and I’m learning more about it every year that we live and work
out here. I’ll take anyone who wants out with me and show them what I have
discovered. Maybe they don’t get as excited as I do but it’s fun time spent
together.

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  Nora loves flowers

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  Nature Tales at the Visitors Center

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  Isaac birdwatching with me

The summer calendar is full of events I want to take the grandkids to, socializing with our volunteer friends, seeing family and friends as much as we can and of course all the time I get to spend tromping around behind the scene’s here at Saylorville. I take some of the inspiration and things I see here and turn them into articles for the two newsletters I write for the park and the summer is ticking by along with my publishing calendar, perhaps a little too fast.

Until next time...

The Weather Factor

In our third year of work camping we are realizing the biggest threat to  sustaining a continuous workcamp arrangement isn’t so much whether one can find work, or whether the job and accommodations will be intolerable, as we encountered in Georgia with NPS last winter. It is a matter of dealing with extreme weather or environmental conditions. We came in on the heels of hurricanes and damage the past two winters. We were lucky the job was there to go to both times. Friends of ours found themselves in the midst of massive wildfires last summer in the southwest. This year catastrophic flooding is affecting campgrounds and parks in the Midwest that are the summer home to many RV volunteers like us. As we watch Saylorville Lake rise and fall and threaten to encroach volunteer village we keep our fingers crossed. For now, it looks like we will be high and dry for the foreseeable future.

Unfortunately, that is not the case for places in the southeast and west corners of Iowa and northern Missouri this summer. As both the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers that form the West and East borders of the great state of Iowa swell with the influx of water from all the rivers in Central Iowa that flow toward them at the southern corners, central Missouri has turned into a sort of funnel for all the water as it makes its way to St. Louis where it will all end up in the Mississippi. Central Missouri is inundated with historic flooding that is destroying everything in its path and drowning entire towns. I wonder to myself how many workcampers have been displaced along with the residents of the areas as muddy, debris filled river water continues to flow and mercilessly destroy everything.

Meanwhile it is snowing at Saylorville. Cottonwood that is. The giant Cottonwood trees are blooming and releasing their cotton. It is always pretty, yet a nuisance. This year, we have all commented that there seems to be much more than usual. Maybe the extreme weather has had an affect on the trees. Maybe all the rain has helped them bloom more. Whatever the case, they are releasing their seed readily. I’ve never paid much attention accept when I clean the screes once it finally stops around late June. As my friend and I strolled through Red Feather Prairie yesterday, we came upon one of the majestic 70’ trees in full bloom and saw the cotton balls on the tree poised to be released into the breeze. Down the path a bit I found a lower branch and for the first time got a close look at the seeds. They hang on the tree like clumps of grapes. Thousands of them. It is no wonder there is so much floating around in the air and accumulating along the sides of roadways and lawns, just like early light snowfall in November. I wonder if the Native Americans or Pioneers of centuries past collected this for pillows and mattresses. Here in the 21^st Century we sneeze, curse it when it sticks to our contact lenses, and clogs the AC Units.

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  Bell pepper plants covered in cotton

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  Cottonwood seed pods

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  Full blooms ready to release

We’ll get up each day, sweep the cotton off the patio, watch
the lake level and carry on, thankful that we aren’t fleeing from a major flood,
wildfire or hurricane---yet.

Until Next Time…